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      Nikki Haley says Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law does not go ‘far enough’

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      Nikki Haley says Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law does not go ‘far enough’Republican presidential candidate makes comments in New Hampshire on controversial law signed by governor Ron DeSantis02:41Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told a New Hampshire audience the controversial “don’t say gay” education law signed by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, does not go “far enough”.DeSantis wins new power over Disney World in ‘don’t say gay’ culture warRead more“Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade,” Haley said. “I’m sorry. I don’t think that goes far enough.”DeSantis’s law bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity through third grade, in which children are eight or nine years old. The law has proved hugely controversial, stoking confrontation with progressives but also corporations key to the Florida economy, Disney prominent among them.Some pediatric psychologists say the law could harm the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth already more likely to face bullying and attempt suicide than other children.Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, this week became the second declared major candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024, after Donald Trump.Widely expected to run, DeSantis is the only candidate who challenges Trump in polling. Surveys have shown Haley in third place, with the potential to split the anti-Trump vote and hand the nomination to the former president.New Hampshire will stage the first primary of the Republican race. In Exeter on Thursday, Haley said: “There was all this talk about the Florida bill – the ‘don’t Say gay bill’. Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade. I’m sorry. I don’t think that goes far enough.“When I was in school you didn’t have sex ed until seventh grade. And even then, your parents had to sign whether you could take the class. That’s a decision for parents to make.”As reported by Fox News, Haley also said Republicans should “focus on new generational leadership” by putting “a badass woman in the White House”.Speaking to Fox News, Haley was asked about DeSantis and the “don’t say gay” law and she doubled down on her comments.She said: “I think Ron’s been a good governor. I just think that third grade’s too young. We should not be talking to kids in elementary school about gender, period.Nikki Haley: video shows Republican candidate saying US states can secedeRead more“And if you are going to talk to kids about it, you need to get the parents’ permission to do that. That is something between a parent and a child. That is not something that schools need to be teaching. Schools need to be teaching reading and math and science. They don’t need to be teaching whether they think you’re a boy or a girl.”Haley also claimed to be focused not on Republican rivals but on “running against Joe Biden”, adding: “I’m not kicking sideways. I’m kicking forward.”Haley, 51, has also attracted attention by controversially proposing mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75.She said: “This is not hard. Just like we go and we turn over our tax returns … why can’t you turn over a mental competency test right when you run for office? Why can’t we have that?”Biden is 80. Trump is 76.TopicsNikki HaleyUS politicsRepublicansRon DeSantisFloridaNew HampshireLGBTQ+ rightsnewsReuse this content More

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      Sarah Palin says Ron DeSantis ‘should stay governor’ and not run for president

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      Sarah Palin says Ron DeSantis ‘should stay governor’ and not run for presidentPalin, who quit as Alaska governor in 2009 amid talk of a run for president, envisions DeSantis running one day ‘but not now’ Ron DeSantis of Florida should stay as governor “a bit longer” and not run for president in 2024, said Sarah Palin – the former Alaska governor who was John McCain’s running mate in 2008 but resigned rather than complete her term after Republican defeat.Nikki Haley calls for ‘new generation’ of leaders in presidential campaign launchRead moreDeSantis, 44, has not declared a run but is widely expected to do so as the only strong challenger to Donald Trump in polling regarding the forming field.Palin, a Trump supporter, told Newsmax: “DeSantis doesn’t need to [run]. I envision him as our president someday but not right now.“He should stay governor for a bit longer. He’s young, you know. He has decades ahead of him where he can be our president.”The field of declared candidates is now two-strong, with the entry of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador. One recent poll showed Haley splitting the anti-Trump vote with DeSantis and thereby handing the nomination to the legally embattled, electorally unpopular former president.In office, DeSantis has aped Trump with hardline and often theatrically cruel policies, focusing on culture war issues including education and the Covid pandemic. But he stormed to re-election last year and is the party establishment favourite. He is widely reported to be readying a run.Palin, 59, said she was “all about healthy, competitive primaries. That makes everybody debate more articulately and work harder and let the people know what records are and visions for this country are.“… But when you talk about the specific people, the individual people who are looking at putting their hat in the ring … they got a lot of guts thinking they’re gonna go up against Trump.”Asked if she would be willing to be Trump’s pick for vice-president, Palin said: “What President Trump and I have talked about is kind of the same thing that we’re talking about.”Palin was plucked from relative obscurity to be McCain’s running mate against Barack Obama in 2008, a risky choice McCain reportedly made by miming rolling a dice and saying: “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”Palin proved a hit with the Republican base – many see her selection as the birth moment of the populist far right which now dominates the party – but not with the electorate at large.She quit as Alaska governor in July 2009, prompting widespread criticism for walking away from the job before her term was up. Many suspected she would run for president. That prospect never materialised but Palin has remained prominent on the US far right.Last year, an attempt to win a seat in Congress fell short despite Trump’s support, with Alaska sending the Democrat Mary Peltola to Washington instead.Palin also fell short in court, when she sued the New York Times for libel.TopicsSarah PalinRon DeSantisDonald TrumpUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      DeSantis wins new power over Disney World in ‘don’t say gay’ culture war

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      DeSantis wins new power over Disney World in ‘don’t say gay’ culture warFlorida legislature gives governor right to name members of board supervising theme park, claiming: ‘There’s a new sheriff in town’ Florida’s far-right governor, Ron DeSantis, has won the right to appoint the members of the board that supervises the development of the state’s famous Walt Disney World theme parks after a fight over a law that restricts sexual orientation and gender identity discussions in schools.Disney as a result is set to lose some of the autonomy it has enjoyed in Florida during the last nearly six decades, but the company has held on to some of its key privileges amid the culture war leveled at it by DeSantis.DeSantis ramps up ‘war on woke’ with new attacks on Florida higher educationRead moreNonetheless, with his usual bluster, DeSantis declared victory over the conglomerate whose mascot is Mickey Mouse, saying: “There’s a new sheriff in town.”DeSantis directed his ire at Disney after the media titan decided to suspend political donations in Florida after the state’s legislature last year passed a “don’t say gay” law that limited mention of LGBTQ+ issues in schools.Florida’s Orlando area is home to the 25,000-acre Disney World theme park complex, which first opened in 1971 and reportedly attracted nearly 13 million visitors last year. And to retaliate, DeSantis sought to strip Disney of a special tax district designation that let the company govern them autonomously, including by issuing tax-exempt bonds and advancing building plans without oversight from certain local authorities.The governor’s move against Disney had the full support of the state legislature, which is controlled by his fellow Republicans and voted to strip the company of its tax district status beginning on 1 June 2023. But then the steep cost of following through on DeSantis’s wishes for Disney became apparent.Letting the district dissolve would require taxpayers in Orange and Osceola counties – which are adjacent to the theme parks – to begin paying for the firefighting, police and road maintenance services that Disney had been paying. And the counties’ taxpayers would also have to cover the Disney tax district’s debt of $1bn or so.So this week, Florida’s legislators adjusted course. They drafted a measure that would empower the state’s governor to appoint the five members of the tax district’s controlling board. It also would leave Disney vulnerable to possibly being forced to pay taxes to fund road projects outside the theme park complex’s vicinity, and new construction costs might increase because the measure eliminated some of the company’s exemption from certain regulatory processes, the New York Times reported.Nonetheless, the new measure would permit Disney – one of Florida’s largest private employers – to retain its special tax district status. And the board would remain powerless as far as influencing what content the company chooses to present to guests at its theme parks as well as viewers of its movies and shows.Florida’s house of representatives approved the legislation on Thursday, and the state senate did the same on Friday.DeSantis said the legislation definitively buried previously aired concerns that Floridians would end up paying more in taxes because of his differences with Disney.“This puts that to bed,” DeSantis said, while also boasting that he was now the new sheriff in town.The president of Disney World, Jeff Vahle, issued a notably apolitical statement to the Times that described the complex as “focused on the future and … ready to work within this new framework”.Separately last week, DeSantis announced plans to block state colleges from having programs on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as on critical race theory – the study of how racism has shaped American history. That plan comes on the heels of his blocking public high schools from teaching a new advanced placement course on African American studies.DeSantis, who has long advocated to keep firearms as accessible to the public as possible, caught some political fire on Friday after the Washington Post reported that he had asked for guns to be banned from a party celebrating his re-election to a second term last year.DeSantis’s campaign staff also asked the Tampa city officials in control of the convention center hosting the party to take responsibility for the gun ban so as not to upset his supporters, the Post’s report added, citing emails obtained by the newspaper.One county-level Republican leader told the Post that such a ban was “a little hypocritical” given how DeSantis has presented himself as a pro-gun rights advocate. A spokesperson for DeSantis told the Post that its reporting was “speculation and hearsay” and that the governor was “strongly in support of individuals’ constitutional right to bear arms”.Many expect DeSantis to pursue the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election. As of Saturday, the former president Donald Trump was the only Republican candidate to have declared an intention to challenge Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.TopicsRon DeSantisWalt Disney CompanyUS politicsFloridanewsReuse this content More

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      Nikki Haley presidential run would sink DeSantis and hand Trump victory – poll

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      Nikki Haley presidential run would sink DeSantis and hand Trump victory – pollYahoo News/YouGov survey finds that an additional Republican candidate would split the vote in former president’s favor As the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley prepares to announce a run for president, a new poll found that just one additional candidate in the 2024 Republican primary will be enough to split the vote and keep Donald Trump ahead of Ron DeSantis, his only current close rival.The race for the 2024 election is on. But who will take on Trump?Read moreThe Yahoo News/YouGov poll gave DeSantis, the Florida governor, a 45%-41% lead over Trump head-to-head. Similar scenarios in other polls have prompted increasing attacks on DeSantis by Trump – and deflections by DeSantis.Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, DeSantis said: “I don’t spend my time trying to smear other Republicans.”But the Wednesday poll also produced an alternative scenario involving Haley that may worry DeSantis.Haley was ambassador to the United Nations under Trump before resigning in 2018. Having changed her mind about challenging her former boss, she is due to announce her campaign in her home state next week.Yahoo News reported: “In a hypothetical three-way match-up, Haley effectively plays the spoiler, attracting 11% of Republicans and Republican-leaners while DeSantis’s support falls by roughly the same amount (to 35%), leaving Trump with more votes than either of them” at 38%.When Trump first ran for the Republican nomination, in 2016, he did so in a primary field which was 17 strong come the first debate. Trump won the nomination without winning a majority of votes cast.He ended his presidency twice-impeached and in wide-ranging legal jeopardy but he is still the only declared candidate for the nomination in 2024, having announced shortly after last year’s midterm elections.Defeats for Trump-endorsed candidates cost Republicans dearly in November, particularly as the US Senate remained in Democratic hands, prompting some Republicans to turn against the idea of a third Trump nomination.Haley is due to announce her run on 15 February in Charleston, South Carolina, before heading to New Hampshire, which also has an early slot on the primary calendar.According to the Yahoo/YouGov poll, Haley attracted much more support than other potential candidates including the former vice-president Mike Pence, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Larry Hogan, a former governor of Maryland.According to NBC News, Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire and like Hogan a Republican moderate, is also preparing to run.Nikki Haley accuses Pompeo of ‘lies and gossip to sell book’ after vice-president plot claimRead moreThe Yahoo/YouGov poll said the same vote-splitting scenario played out with fields larger than three: the anti-Trump vote split and Trump therefore beat DeSantis. Other polls have returned similar results.Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times in Iowa, the state that will vote first, recently told the Guardian: “These folks must be watching Trump’s poll numbers and that’s why there’s a delay [in announcements].”“Trump and DeSantis are doing this sparring around the ring. Others are watching to see if somebody takes a blow and gives them an opening.”But Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, an anti-Trump conservative website, recently wrote: “Presumably the numerous candidates gearing up to run in the GOP primary understand that a fractured field benefits Donald Trump.”“Are we sure they understand that they’d need to coalesce around a frontrunner by February 2024 to avoid the same scenario that gave us Trump in 2016?”TopicsUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpRon DeSantisNikki HaleynewsReuse this content More

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      Conservatives angry about school ‘indoctrination’ are telling on themselves | Jan-Werner Müller

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      Conservatives angry about school ‘indoctrination’ are telling on themselvesJan-Werner MüllerIdeologues like Ron DeSantis aren’t angry at politics in education; they’re angry their politics don’t have a monopoly The rightwing governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, and his administration recently blocked a proposed black studies course for advanced placement high school students, as well as announced policies that would inhibit state universities from teaching programming about racial diversity, equity and inclusion or so-called “critical race theory”. These moves follow on the heels of Florida’s “don’t say gay” legislation, last year, restricting teachers from discussing sexual orientation.DeSantis and other conservative politicians argue that they are saving America’s young from leftwing indoctrination, and that students should instead be exposed to “civic education” that extolls a patriotic vision of America. When DeSantis and his growing number of acolytes present themselves as champions of civic education, however, they are in fact undermining the whole point of civics: not to make children “patriotic” or just fill brains with facts (how many branches of government are there again?), but to enable individuals to be fearless, critical citizens.That very enterprise is threatened by these systematic intimidation campaigns. In fact, DeSantis’s anti-education crusade is doubly authoritarian – most obviously in its use of state power to suppress ideas and information, but also in its more subtle assumption that teaching is ultimately about imposing doctrines of one sort or another.It is an open question whether the College Board did cave to pressure from conservatives when they removed supposedly controversial material from the new African American history AP course. It is also an open question to what extent civil rights lawyers and free speech advocates can stop DeSantis’s censorship laws in court. But one thing is clear: damage to US democracy is being done already. Despite valiant resistance, on the whole, teachers and professors are intimidated. As we know from the rise of authoritarianism in other countries and periods, all-out repression is not always necessary: people obey in advance, make small adjustments, or altogether vacate a territory where the red lines which must not be crossed are left purposefully vague.We also know from anti-education crusades disguised as culture wars in states such as Hungary that defenders of academic freedom are faced with a dilemma, one that is being reproduced in the US today. On the one hand, defenders can try to deny that anything they do is political at all. Education, they might insist, is about science and telling the kids what’s what only in terms of facts.Less obviously, they might seek to escape politics by emphasizing worthy enterprises like “service learning”. Yet community service, as valuable as it can be both for students and the community, cannot substitute for genuine political education, in which students learn to discuss and, above all, to disagree. As John Hopkins president Ron Daniels has pointed out, students are ever more willing to volunteer, which is great (of course, volunteering also always looks good on CVs, one might add), but less eager to engage democratic politics more directly – and colleges seem complicit in this trend.Teachers are rightly worried that, in an age of hyper-polarization, politics can make their classrooms explode; often enough, they also lack the time, resources and skills to deal with what can be a drawn-out and difficult process of young people learning how to negotiate their differences in a democratic manner. Add to that the sense that we are falling behind globally in Stem, and hence should not waste time on soft subjects that won’t help us compete with China.But there is no escape: those declaring the supposed “education establishment” their enemy won’t accept claims that schools aren’t doing politics. The likes of Viktor Orbán and his de facto pupil DeSantis will frame professors as purveyors of dangerous ideologies no matter what. For that is their political business model. Moral panics happen because political entrepreneurs want to spread panic; responses that come down to “don’t panic!” or “let’s talk about something else” won’t work.That is especially so with propaganda about pedagogy: schooling is so damn close to home, and yet not under the control of those at home; appeals to deep worries about what is happing to the kids when they are out of our hands can be very effective. (It is not an accident that conspiracy theories like QAnon use the quasi-natural resource of parental fears for generating panic and hate.)So, should one simply concede that it’s all politics, all the time, all the way down, and that everyone is simply spreading their ideology? Of course not. Education is political not because everyone gets to teach their politics to innocent charges, but because it is indispensable for democracy. As John Dewey, the greatest 20th-century philosopher of education put it, “democracy has to be born anew every generation and education is its midwife”. Countries with well-functioning democracies also do well on civic education scores. But that is not just a matter of knowledge about democracy, but doing democracy, which can be uncomfortable, even distressing and guilt-inducing (feelings which the Sunshine State Inquisitors try to banish by law from the classroom).Good teachers will assist students with how to think through issues; they don’t tell them what to think about issues. It is telling that some conservative crusaders – with an obvious tendency to project their own approach on to others – cannot conceive of teaching this way. To them, education is a weapon; content is not to be debated, but imposed. It is one thing to find fault with the specifics of the “western civ”-style curricula that DeSantis cadres want to do; it’s another to point out that the very approach is a continuation of Trump’s unprofessional 1776 Commission, which can only see history as a patriotic confidence-booster and, indeed, indoctrination.
      Jan-Werner Müller teaches at Princeton and is a Guardian US columnist. His most recent book is Democracy Rules
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      The race for the 2024 election is on. But who will take on Trump?

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      The race for the 2024 election is on. But who will take on Trump?The ex-president is daring Republican challengers to make the first move – and some are preparing to attack The starting gun has been fired and the race for the White House is under way. But in Iowa, where the first-in-the-nation Republican caucuses are just a year off, the landscape is icy and snowy and eerily silent.There is no great mystery why: the Donald Trump effect.Sarah Huckabee Sanders to give Republican State of the Union responseRead more“These folks must be watching Trump’s poll numbers and that’s why there’s a delay,” said Art Cullen, editor of Iowa’s Storm Lake Times. “Trump and [Florida governor Ron] DeSantis are doing this sparring around the ring. Others are watching to see if somebody takes a blow and gives them an opening.”At the same stage in 2019, at least a dozen Democratic contenders for the presidency had either been to Iowa or announced plans to visit soon. “We were getting one every other week,” recalled Cullen, noting that the first major candidate forum took place in March.But among potential Republican hopefuls for 2024 only the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson has visited so far this year while Tim Scott, a senator for South Carolina, and Kari Lake, a former candidate for governor of Arizona, seen as a possible Trump running mate, have lined up appearances later this month.Trump, the only declared candidate so far, has not yet been to Iowa but his campaign is finally moving up a gear. Last weekend the former US president addressed Republicans at small-scale events in two other early voting states, New Hampshire and South Carolina, vowing to “complete the unfinished business of making America great again”. He is issuing policy statements, building infrastructure and unveiling endorsements that signal: catch me if you can.It is a surprisingly orthodox approach from the most unconventional of candidates. The 76-year-old was twice impeached, was blamed for thousands of deaths in the coronavirus pandemic and encouraged a violent coup on 6 January 2021. He is facing multiple criminal investigations and yet, with remarkable insouciance, styling himself as incumbent in all but name and betting on voters’ short memories.He is also throwing down the gauntlet to would-be challengers, daring them to make the first move. While there are signs that some are preparing to take him on, none has yet launched a full-frontal attack on Trump or Trumpism, apparently wary of earning his wrath and alienating his base.Bill Whalen, a former media consultant for California politicians including former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said: “I don’t think anybody wants to run and be a bad guy wrestler, be seen as the heel whose one purpose is just to attack Donald Trump. It’s not a ticket to success and it’s grinding because Trump will return fire. What’s the old saying about wrestling with the pig in the mud: you get dirty and the pig enjoys it more than you do.”It emerged this week that Nikki Haley, 51, who was South Carolina’s governor before serving as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, is planning to announce her candidacy in Charleston on 15 February. In 2021 Haley told the Associated Press that she “would not run if President Trump ran”, but she has since changed her mind, telling Fox News that she could be part of “new generational change”.In South Carolina last Saturday Trump told WIS-TV that Haley had called him several days earlier to seek his opinion. “She said she would never run against me because I was the greatest president, but people change their opinions, and they change what’s in their hearts,” he said. “So I said, if your heart wants to do it, you have to go do it.”Trump appears more threatened by – and less courteous towards – DeSantis, who won re-election in a landslide in Florida and is beating him in some opinion polls. Trump, who helped elevate DeSantis in the past, has dubbed him “Ron DeSanctimonious” and said a DeSantis challenge for the 2024 nomination would be “a great act of disloyalty”.But even DeSantis – who is not expected to declare until the Florida legislature adjourns in the spring – has pulled his punches so far. He responded to Trump’s attack with only a coded rebuke, drawing a contrast between his own success and Trump’s failure at the ballot box in 2020: “Not only did we win re-election, we won with the highest percentage of the vote that any Republican governor candidate has in the history of the state of Florida.”Other possible candidates such as Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence and his ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo have been similarly circumspect in critiquing their former boss, taking the odd swipe while also praising his administration and their parts in it. Taking on Trump directly carries huge political risks, as rivals such as Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio discovered via name calling, insults and humiliation in 2016.John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “There is the the sense that alienating Donald Trump is a very thankless task. Trump comes down with a hammer, an anvil and a safe from the sky. Even though it is clear that a lot of the magic is gone from Trump, by the same token he can do extensive damage. He still has his own forum and he still has his own loyal following and he can suck up all the negative oxygen. Whether Trump wins or loses, he blocks.”Even so, Trump could soon have company on the campaign trail, not least because primaries often draw long-shot candidates who would welcome the consolation prize of a book deal, radio show, TV pundit gig or slot as winner’s running mate.State governors who might seek to build their brand nationally include Greg Abbott of Texas, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Chris Sununu of New Hampshire and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia.It remains to be seen if forthright Trump critics such as Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming, and Larry Hogan, the ex-governor of Maryland, will throw their hats in the ring. Few observers expect such a candidate to win a primary more likely to offer voters different flavors of “Make America great again” (Maga), with culture warrior DeSantis aiming to prove himself a younger, more dynamic version of the brand than the Trump original.Drexel Heard, a Democratic strategist, said: “It’s going to be very interesting to see how Maga Nikki Haley becomes in the primary. I find Nikki Haley to be intelligent but she is going to have to go full tilt Maga to get through this primary because she’s up against somebody like Ron DeSantis, who is already coming out of the gate with red meat.”With a fiercely loyal base, Trump stands to benefit from a divided field, just as he did in 2016. In South Carolina he has already bagged the endorsements of Governor Henry McMaster and Senator Lindsey Graham, stealing a march on Haley and Scott within the state. But as Trump seeks to normalise himself with a traditional campaign so far, there are also important differences from seven years ago.Whalen, the former California consultant who is now a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, said: “First, there are legal issues. Now, some are more serious than others but if you’re running for president and you’re taking the fifth amendment 400 times, it’s not a good look for a candidate.“Second, he has a record to deal with that he didn’t have. Donald Trump was a hypothetical in 2015 and 2016, a tabula rasa when it came to holding office. Now he has four years in office which he has to explain. He’s not a hypothetical, he’s somebody who has had the job before, so voters have to make the calculation: do they want him in office again?“Third, there was not a Ron DeSantis-like figure in 2016. There was nobody quite in the same position as DeSantis in terms of the ability to do three things at once: monetise, point to a very successful record in his state and play the game that Trump plays. That is what makes DeSantis an option that wasn’t there for Republicans in 2016. In 2024, there is someone potentially who could fight fire with fire.”Other commentators agree that, despite the slow start in Iowa, the Republican primary looks set to be far more competitive than anyone imagined a year ago. The party was willing to overlook any number of Trump’s lies and misdemeanors but not the miserable performance of his handpicked candidates in last November’s midterm elections. The self-proclaimed winner has become a serial loser: his fundraising numbers so far have been relatively disappointing.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “I’m not seeing a whole lot of Trump fear. It looks to me that there has been a truly wide agreement in Republican circles that Trump is weak and that he’s beatable. Moreover, he may be even weaker with the coming indictments. To me what’s going on right now is just confirmation that Trump’s hold on the Republican party is loosening.“I would say it’s pretty open. Trump is a favourite but he’s got some very serious long-term viability issues in the field that is obviously no longer intimidated by him. Republicans are tired of losing.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansRon DeSantisIowaMike PenceNikki HaleyfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Trump seems oddly relaxed about Republican rival Nikki Haley | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Trump seems oddly relaxed about Republican rival Nikki Haley. Is it because she doesn’t stand a chance?Arwa MahdawiRon DeSantis would supposedly be ‘disloyal’ if he challenged Trump for the White House. Haley, meanwhile, ‘should do it’. Guess who’s a bigger threat? Has Donald Trump taken up meditation as his new year resolution? Is he mainlining sedatives? Did a demon snatch his soul and replace it with that of a reasonable person? I ask because the unthinkable has happened: Trump has responded to the idea of one of his former acolytes challenging his 2024 ambitions in a calm and measured manner, instead of with his usual insults.The acolyte in question is Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and Trump’s US ambassador to the UN. There are mounting rumours that Haley is exploring a potential run against Trump in 2024 – a fact that doesn’t seem to bother her old boss very much. Speaking to reporters on his plane on Saturday, Trump said Haley had called him up to chat about running and he’d told her: “Go by your heart if you want to run.” To be fair, he couldn’t resist a little dig, noting Haley had “publicly said that ‘I would never run against my president – he was a great president.’” Still, he magnanimously told her she “should do it”.Trump wasn’t quite as high-minded about another of his former disciples who also has his eye on the White House. During the same press session, Trump attacked the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, accusing him of trying to “rewrite” history as regards his Covid response. “When I hear that he might [run], I think it’s very disloyal,” Trump said, according to Politico, adding: “He won’t be leading. I got him elected. I’m the one that chose him.”Why is Trump bothered about DeSantis and blase about Haley? It’s not sedatives or soul-swapping demons at play, I reckon – it’s misogyny. My guess is that Trump thinks Haley has zero chance of the top job so he’s happy to humour the little lady. DeSantis, meanwhile, is far more of a threat.To be fair, the polls support this thesis. Three national polls released in January show Trump leads the field in a hypothetical 2024 Republican presidential primary, but DeSantis is firmly in second place. Haley, meanwhile, is polling at 3% – way behind Trump’s range of 48-55%. Still, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from recent years, it’s that polls should be taken with a very large pinch of salt. Just because it currently seems that Haley has little chance of winning the Republican nomination doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Remember how many people wrote Trump off in 2016.Haley, for her part, seems to think she’s in with a shot. In a recent interview with Fox News she noted that she’s “never lost a race … Stay tuned.” Meanwhile, one Republican told the Hill that the former governor “has decided her time is now and she’s about to take the gloves off when it comes to Trump, DeSantis and [Mike] Pompeo”. The gloves have already been slipping. Haley, 51, recently tweeted a clip from her Fox News interview during which she said, in a blatant reference to Joe Biden and Trump’s ages, that she thinks “it’s time for new generational change. I don’t think you need to be 80 years old to go be a leader in DC. I think we need a young generation to come in, step up and really start fixing things.” Look, I agree with the rabidly rightwing Haley on absolutely nothing but if she wants to define 51 as “young” (which it objectively is in the geriatric US government) I’m all for that.Also in Haley’s favour is that she has always cynically used the fact that she’s an Indian-American woman (her birth name is Nimrata Randhawa) and the child of immigrants to deflect from bigotry in the Republican party and seem palatable to some liberals. Simultaneously, however, she’s adept at throwing meat to the rightwing base and wading into culture wars. “CRT [critical race theory] is un-American,” she tweeted on Monday, for example.So could Haley be the first female president of the US? Again, I wouldn’t write it off. She’s smart, ambitious and apparently devoid of any sort of moral compass: all the qualifications you need to get to the top in politics.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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      Ron DeSantis prepares for 2024 White House bid as Trump hits campaign trail

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      Ron DeSantis prepares for 2024 White House bid as Trump hits campaign trail Moves spur Trump into attacking Florida governor during low key events over the weekend in Iowa and New HampshireAmerica’s 2024 presidential race is showing signs of kicking into gear amid reports that Florida’s rightwing Republican governor Ron DeSantis is now laying the groundwork for a White House bid as Donald Trump finally hit the campaign trail.DeSantis’s moves even spurred Trump into attacking him directly as the former US president held relatively low key events over the weekend in the key early voting states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.“Ron would have not been governor if it wasn’t for me… when I hear he might run, I consider that very disloyal,” Trump said, before seeking to slam DeSantis’s actions over fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.DeSantis began his time as Florida’s governor in the shadow of Trump, whose political messaging he closely emulated. But he has since emerged as Trump’s most powerful political rival in the Republican party, increasingly popular with many party officials who are wary of the scandals and chaos that accompanied Trump’s time in office.The Washington Post has reported that DeSantis’s political team has already identified potential campaign hires in states like Iowa and New Hampshire, whose traditional early spots in the nomination contest give them outsize influence on the race.Citing two Republican sources with knowledge of conversations and staff meeting on DeSantis team, the paper said the Florida governor was in close talks with two current and experienced members of his current team – Phil Cox and Generra Peck – about possible senior roles in any 2024 effort.Bill Bowen, a New Hampshire Republican delegate, told the paper that his state would likely be receptive to DeSantis. “I’m convinced there’s a good network of establishment party people in New Hampshire that will quickly have a very effective DeSantis campaign,” Bowen said.DeSantis has carved out turf in the Republican party that invites conflict with Trump. He has tacked to the extremist right, especially on social issues. His state has restricted LGBTQ+ rights and abortion, sought to demonize further education in the state as a bastion of liberal power and he has enflamed tensions over immigration with a series of political stunts.In response to DeSantis’s likely presidential bid, Trump has issued threats against the governor. Last November, Trump appeared to warn DeSantis by hinting at political blackmail against DeSantis’s potential 2024 run.“I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly… I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering – I know more about him than anybody – other than, perhaps, his wife,” Trump told Fox News.It was once widely expected that Trump – the only so far declared major candidate for the Republican nomination – would be largely unopposed. But a series of scandals, including meeting with white nationalists, and the flop of high-profile Trump-backed candidates in November’s midterm elections, has seen his grip on the party loosen considerably.Now a swath of other Republicans seem poised to enter the race.Trump even appeared to give his blessing to his former US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, after she informed him that she is considering a 2024 presidential bid.“I talked to her for a little while, I said, ‘Look, you know, go by your heart if you want to run’… She’s publicly said that ‘I would never run against my president, he was a great president,’” Trump told reporters on Saturday, CNN reports.He added that he told Haley that she “should do it”.In a Fox News interview earlier this month, when asked about her previous comments about not running for president if Trump ran, Haley responded that the “survival of America matters”.“It’s bigger than one person. And when you’re looking at the future of America, I think it’s time for new generational change. I don’t think you need to be 80 years old to go be a leader in DC… I think we need a young generation to come in, step up, and really start fixing things,” she said.Other former Trump cabinet members have also hinted at their presidential bids. Earlier this week, CBS asked former national security adviser John Bolton if he is considering a 2024 run. Bolton said that characterization is “exactly right”, the outlet reports.Bolton also criticized Trump’s 2024 presidential bid, calling it “poison” to the Republican party.“I think Republicans, especially after the November 8 elections last year, see that he’s poison to the ticket. He cannot be elected president. If he were the Republican nominee, he would doom our chances to get a majority in the Senate and the House. I don’t think he’s going to be the Republican nominee,” he said.On Tuesday, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo said that he will decide whether he will run for president. Speaking to CBS, Pompeo said: “Susan and I are thinking, praying, trying to figure out if this is the next place to go serve,” referring to his wife.“We haven’t gotten to that conclusion. We’ll figure this out in the next handful of months,” he added.When asked whether Trump’s 2024 presidential bid is having an impact on his own decision-making, Pompeo said: “None.”There are also likely to be a host of other Republicans eventually in the race with people like Georgia governor Brian Kemp and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin among names often touted as likely runners.TopicsUS elections 2024Ron DeSantisUS politicsDonald TrumpRepublicansFloridanewsReuse this content More